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Impact of video gaming on the brain (2015-07-01)

A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B by the teams of Dr. Gregory West (Assistant Professor at the Université de Montréal) and Dr. Véronique Bohbot (Douglas Institute researcher and associate Professor at McGill University and the Douglas Research Institute of the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île de Montréal) shows that while video game players (VGPs) exhibit more efficient visual attention abilities, they are also much more likely to use navigation strategies that rely on the brain’s reward system (the caudate nucleus) and not the brain’s spatial memory system (the hippocampus). Past research has shown that people who use caudate nucleus-dependent navigation strategies have decreased grey matter and lower functional brain activity in the hippocampus.

The effects of intense video gaming on the brain are only beginning to be understood.
Playing action video games has some beneficial impacts - faster response times and larger useful field of vision for example. It’s also associated with activity in parts of the brain that are linked to rewards and habit formation and the type of memory that helps us learn tasks like riding a bike.
The team tested gamers and non-gamers to see if they used ‘response learning strategies’ or ‘spatial strategies’ to navigate in a virtual reality test. Spatial strategies mean we make a map of landmarks in our brains and where they are in relation to each other to work out where we are. Response learners on the other hand memorise series of left and right turns to make a route from A to B.

The study was conducted among a group of adult gamers who were spending at least six hours per week on this activity.
In a test with 26 gamers and 33 non gamers the team found that gamers memorised specific routes to navigate the virtual world 80% of the time; twice that of non-gamers who were more reliant on remembering landmarks in the virtual world and only used response learning 42% of the time.

“For more than a decade now, research has demonstrated that action video game players display more efficient visual attention abilities, and our current study has once again confirmed this notion,” says first author Dr. Gregory West. “However, we also found that gamers rely on the caudate-nucleus to a greater degree than non-gamers. Past research has shown that people who rely on caudate nucleus-dependent strategies have lower grey matter and functional brain activity in the hippocampus. This means that people who spend a lot of time playing video games may have reduced hippocampal integrity, which is associated with an increased risk of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.”

Because past research has shown video games as having positive effects on attention, it is important for future research to confirm that gaming does not have a negative effect on the hippocampus. Future research using neuroimaging will be necessary to further qualify our current findings, and these studies should investigate the direct effects of specific video games on the integrity of the reward system and hippocampus.

For more information
Greg L. West, Brandi Lee Drisdelle, Kyoko Konishi, Jonathan Jackson, Pierre Jolicoeur, Veronique D. Bohbot
Habitual action video game playing is associated with caudate nucleus-dependent navigational strategies.

MDN